NEW YORK -- Kodai Senga’s health, an open question for most of the past 16 months, has again fallen into the realm of uncertainty.
Senga strained his right hamstring Thursday fielding an errant throw from Pete Alonso in the Mets’ 4-3 win over the Nationals. A day later, the righty was placed on the 15-day injured list, and the club recalled right-hander Max Kranick from Triple-A Syracuse.
“It’s hard for me to speculate, but obviously we know he’s going to be down,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “As soon as he goes down like that, he grabs the hamstring -- we saw it last year, unfortunately. But we’ve got to wait till tomorrow and see what we’re dealing with here.”
With one out in the sixth inning Thursday, CJ Abrams hit a grounder to the right side, where Alonso fielded it and flipped high to first base. Sprinting toward the bag, Senga leaped to corral Alonso’s throw and came down awkwardly, collapsing to the ground as he grabbed his right leg.
Afterward, Senga told Alonso that he felt a pull in his hamstring before he left the ground. Alonso’s teammates similarly gathered around him to offer encouragement -- words and actions that proved of little comfort to the first baseman, even as the Mets won their sixth straight game and swept their second consecutive series.
“I still feel awful, because for me, I’m just trying to make a baseball play, just trying to make a play for my pitcher,” Alonso said. “I tried to make the best throw that I could, and it just sucks. It sucks to be involved in that. Senga, he’s one of our guys here. … Things happen during the season, but I wish it wouldn’t have turned out like that.”
The scene was hauntingly similar to last July, when Senga strained his right calf in pursuit of a popup and wound up missing the rest of the regular season. That was Senga’s first outing after suffering a capsule strain in his pitching shoulder in Spring Training. He returned a second time in October with mostly poor results, admitting afterward that he was not 100 percent.
As recently as this spring, physical questions lingered around Senga, who didn’t pitch until the fifth game of the regular season because the Mets wanted to give him extra time to prepare. They have since rejiggered their rotation on four separate occasions to accommodate the right-hander, who has not thrown on regular rest since 2023. Any time Senga was scheduled to go with four days between starts, the Mets inserted a sixth starter into the rotation to give him an extra day.
For Senga, the process had been working. He left the mound Thursday leading the Majors by a wide margin with a 1.47 ERA and was well on his way to a second career All-Star appearance. Despite peripheral metrics that suggested he’d been the beneficiary of some good fortune, Senga had re-established himself as one of the league’s best starters.
“He’s pitching so amazing and he’s working so hard, you hate to see him go down,” said outfielder Brandon Nimmo, who along with Jeff McNeil homered in the win. “You just feel for him, knowing it’s a hamstring.”
Hamstring strains can vary greatly depending upon their severity, with the mildest cases necessitating only a brief absence and the most severe requiring multiple months. By rule, Senga must miss a minimum of 15 days on the IL.
In the interim, the Mets are well positioned to paper over Senga’s absence. So well stocked in the rotation that they recently moved Paul Blackburn to the bullpen, the Mets have two more starters nearing returns from injury. Frankie Montas (right lat strain) most likely has two Minor League rehab starts left before the Mets will activate him. Sean Manaea (right oblique strain) probably has three or four more.
In the short-term, the Mets could move Blackburn back into the rotation and use Montas as a sixth starter later this month, when they have 13 consecutive games without an off-day from June 17-29. Longer-term, they will wait and see how things progress with Senga and the rest of their rotation.
“We feel for him, but nobody’s going to feel sorry for us,” Mendoza said. “We’ve got people coming, and the guys that are healthy now, they will continue to step up, and we feel good with our chances with the guys that we’ve got in that room. It’s part of it. Every team deals with it. We’ve got to keep going. We’ll get him back.”